“He [President Obama] has been … open, practically apolitical, certainly nonpartisan, in terms of welcoming every idea and solution. I think that’s one of the reasons the Republicans want to take him down politically, because they know he is a nonpartisan president, and that’s something very hard for them to cope with.”

As a truly non-partisan observer, I would say that I have not seen a President in my lifetime as empty of strategic thinking and substantive ideas. Jeez, Bill Clinton did more substantive thinking in the shower in the morning than Obama has done in five years. This man is all hyper-divisive rhetoric. If Obama supporters want to compare him to a great leader, he reminds me in some ways of Bismark in the sense that Bismark was the master of negative integration, of defining an internal enemy (a Reichsfeinde) on every issue and marginalizing that enemy to unify everyone else on his side. Of course, eventually, the legacy of that approach did not work out so well.

DMac:

The left does live in a world of it's own, and has for years.
"I live in a rather special world. I only know one person who voted for Nixon. Where they are I don't know. They're outside my ken. But sometimes when I'm in a theater I can feel them.".... Pauline Kael

norse:

Amen. The statement isn't even internally consistent: the least likely opponent a group of people would take down is one who is genuinely open to their points of view.
Then again, I am with the camp that believes that it's rational for politicians to spout nonsense, because the majority of the electorate isn't paying attention.

Matthew Slyfield:

Chris Smith:

There has been no greater disservice to the Democratic Party and the American people as a whole than the refusal of the Media to call the Democrats on their absolute, industrial-grade BS.

Look TV and newspaper reporters, maybe the whole Nixon thing may have made you distrust the Republican leadership. But that's no reason to give the Democrats a free pass on any of the dribbly, green balls of crud that sputter out of their mouths in peristaltic spurts. Because one party had one terrible criminal or two does not mean the other party is made up of saints with hearts of gold. It's much more like that BOTH parties are filled with terrible criminals, and it's your job to report on them all.

George:

Pelosi doesn't lie. She flaps her lips and ululates, and when the sounds produced resemble a statement of human speech, it's mere happenstance, like a natural stone formation that vaguely resembles a human head.

morganovich:

the most recent whopper from fancy nancy:

"House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi says Republican-led efforts to rein in government spending are pointless because there is nothing left to cut in the almost $4 trillion-a-year federal budget.
“The cupboard is bare. There’s no more cuts to make. It’s really important that people understand that,” Mrs. Pelosi, California Democrat, said in an interview broadcast Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

got that? federal spending is up by 5% of gdp in the last 5 years, but we have cut to the bone.

this seems like a really nasty exercise in the realpolotik of a post rational age.

there exists a certain subset of extreme partisans who think in purely emotional terms and do not vet or consider the statements made by folks like nancy. they have already decided that they play for team blue or team red and simply uncritically adopt and regurgitate whatever they say.

it's just an extended appeal to authority fallacy, but what's scary is the politicians seem to be realizing that ti does not matter at all how indefensible their comments are because they will not have to defend them to anyone who would have possibly voted for them anyway.